Just a little blog about me and mine.

ATNTFTB: Ash Wednesday February 25, 2009

I wanted to find an article on Lent and Ash Wednesday to combine two blogs into one: one my daily news story and the other explaining why I’ll have an oily and dirty smudge on my forehead later this evening.
So, I went to the New York Times website and searched for Ash Wednesday. I think the results show us a bit about our national religious literacy, or lack thereof.

The first article is about a fairly sounding horrid movie from 1973 called Ash Wednesday starring Henry Fonda and Elizabeth Taylor. From the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s I saw notices that churches would be holding their annual Ash Wednesday services to begin the penitential season of Lent. By 2008, there were only notices that New York City parking rules would follow the weekend schedule on Ash Wednesday. Also, the U.S. and British bombing of the German city of Dresden in World War II took place on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday–burning to death over 100,000 Germans in their homes, but not actually reaching any military targets. A nun meditating on this event said, meditating in her convent on that first day of Lent, thinks of the smudge of ash on her forehead; it is ”as if . . . the dust of cities wrecked by war had touched them this Wednesday of ashes.” Penitence needed indeed.